America abounds in the material of poetry. Its history, its scenery, the structure of its social life, the thoughts which pervade its political forms, the meaning which underlies its hot contests, are all capable of being exhibited in a poetical aspect. Carlyle, in speaking of the settlement of Plymouth by the Pilgrims, remarks that, if we had the open sense of the Greeks, we should have “found a poem here; one of nature’s own poems, such as she writes in broad facts over great continents.” If we have a literature, it should be a national literature; no feeble or sonorous echo of Germany or England, but essentially American in its tone and object. No matter how meritorious a composition may be, as long as any foreign nation can say that it has done the same thing better, so long shall we be spoken of with contempt, or in a spirit of impertinent patronage. We begin to sicken of the custom, now so common, of presenting even our best poems to the attention of foreigners with a deprecating, apologetic air; as if their acceptance of the offering, with a few soft and silky compliments, would be an act of kindness demanding our warmest acknowledgements. If the Quarterly Review or Blackwood’s Magazine speaks well of an American production, we think that we can praise it ourselves, without incurring the reproach of bad taste. The folly we yearly practice, of flying into a passion with some inferior English writer, who caricatures our faults, and tells dull jokes about his tour through the land, has only the effect to exalt an insignificant scribbler into notoriety, and give a nominal value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling of a pert coxcomb, who was discontented with our taverns, or the execrations of some bluff sea-captain, who was shocked with our manners. The uneasy sense we have of something in our national existence which has not yet been fitly expressed, gives poignancy to the least ridicule launched at faults and follies which lie on the superficies of our life. Every person feels that a book which condemns the country for its peculiarities of manners and customs does not pierce into the heart of the matter, and is essentially worthless. If Bishop Berkeley, when he visited Malebranche, had paid exclusive attention to the habitation, raiment, and manners of the man, and neglected the conversation of the metaphysician, and, when he returned to England, had entertained Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot, with satirical descriptions of the “complement extern” of his eccentric host, he would have acted just as wisely as many an English tourist, with whose malicious pleasantry on our habits of chewing, spitting, and eating, we are silly enough to quarrel. To the United States, in reference to the pop-gun shots of foreign tourists, might be addressed the warning which Peter Plymley thundered against Bonaparte, in reference to the Anti-Jacobin jests of Canning: Tremble, oh thou land of many spitters and voters, “for a pleasant man has come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk to thee, and thou shalt be no more!”
In order that America may take its due rank in the commonwealth of nations, a literature is needed which shall be the exponent of its higher life. We live in times of turbulence and change. There is a general dissatisfaction, manifesting itself often in rude contests and ruder speech, with the gulf which separates principles from actions. Men are struggling to realize dim ideals of right and truth, and each failure adds to the desperate earnestness of their efforts. Beneath all the shrewdness and selfishness of the American character, there is a smouldering enthusiasm which flames out at the first touch of fire,—sometimes at the hot and hasty words of party, and sometimes at the bidding of great thoughts and unselfish principles. The heart of the nation is easily stirred to its depths; but those who rouse its fiery impulses into action are often men compounded of ignorance and wickedness, and wholly unfit to guide the passions which they are able to excite. There is no country in the world which has nobler ideas embodied in more worthless shapes. All our factions, fanaticisms, reforms, parties, creeds, ridiculous or dangerous though they often appear, are founded on some aspiration or reality which deserves a better form and expression. There is a mighty power in great speech. If the sources of what we call our fooleries and faults were rightly addressed, they would echo more majestic and kindling truths. We want a poetry which shall speak in clear, loud tones to the people; a poetry which shall make us more in love with our native land, by converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thought; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle, and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin partitions of conventionalism and expediency; vindicate the majesty of reason; give new power to the voice of conscience, and new vitality to human affection; soften and elevate passion; guide enthusiasm in a right direction, and speak out in the high language of men to a nation of men.—E. P. Whipple.
THE THREE PERIODS OF OUR LITERATURE.
The literary history of the United States may be treated under three distinctly marked periods, viz.: a colonial, or ante-revolutionary period, during which the literature of the country was closely assimilated in form and character to that of England; a first American period (from 1775 to 1820) which witnessed the transition from a style for the most part imitative to one national or peculiar, as a consequence of the revolutionary struggle and the ideas generated by it; a second American (from 1820 to the present time), in which the literature of the country assumed a decided character of originality.
Though men of letters were found everywhere among the colonists, in New England alone, where the first printing press was established, was there any considerable progress made in literary culture, and the literature of the colonial period was chiefly confined to that locality or indirectly connected with it. The earliest development, owing to the religious character of the people, and to the fact that during the first century after the settlement of the country the clergy were the best informed and educated class, was theological. Some of the works, by Edwards and others, in defense of the dogmas of the church were very elaborate, and the positions taken maintained with much ability and acuteness of argument.
The influence of the great English essayists and novelists of the eighteenth century had, meanwhile, begun to affect the literature of the New World; and in the essays, the collection of maxims published under the title of “Poor Richard,” or “The Way to Wealth,” the scientific papers and autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, we have specimens of practical philosophy, or of simple narrative expressed in a style eminently clear, pleasing, and condensed; and not unfrequently embellished by the wit and elegance characteristic of the best writers of Queen Anne’s time. His investigations in electricity and other scientific subjects are not less felicitously narrated, and together with the works of James Logan, Paul Dudley, Cadwallader Colden and John Bartram, a naturalist, and one of the earliest of American travelers, constitute the chief contributions to scientific literature during the colonial period.
II. The earliest works produced during the first American period, commencing with the Revolution, are naturally associated with the causes which led to that event. The severance of the intellectual reliance of the colonies on the mother country followed as a consequence of their political independence, and as early as the commencement of the revolutionary struggle the high literary ability as well as practical wisdom evinced in the public documents of the principal American statesmen, were recognized by Lord Chatham, in whose opinion these productions rivaled the masterpieces of antiquity. Politics now gained a prominence almost equal to that enjoyed by theology in the preceding period. The discussions accorded thoroughly with the popular taste, and the influence of political writers and orators in giving a decided national type to American literature is unmistakable.
III. The last period of American literature presents a marked contrast with those which preceded in the national character, as well as in the variety and extent of its productions. In 1820 the poverty of American Literature was sneeringly commented upon by Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review, but from that date, the political crisis being past, the intellectual development of the country has been commensurate with its social and material progress, until at the present day it can be said there is no department of human knowledge which has not been more or less thoroughly explored by American authors. In history, natural science, jurisprudence, and imaginative literature their efforts have not been exceeded by those of contemporary authors in any part of the world.
The catalogue of American books, many of them having rare excellence, published in the last half century would fill volumes.